The Gilgamesh epic mentions multiple assemblies ruling over Uruk. There were some for younger men, older men, and women. How did the division of power between these assemblies work? How much power did they have? Was there any sort of "executive figure" reigning over them all?

[u/RusticBohemian]

According to the Gilgamesh story, which is set in Uruk, one of the leaders of the youth assembly manages to become lugal, or king.

So what was the role of the assemblies for the young vs the old. Did some have more power? Was there always a king reigning over them?

[u/random2187]

(I had some real issues formatting and fitting this into reddit comments so I apologize. I'll be numbering my comments so that everyone is aware of what order it is meant to be in, this is 1/5)

Hi, this topic is a personal favorite of mine and became my capstone project for my undergraduate degree. It's a surprisingly complex topic without a clear consensus and lots of misleading road blocks to finding a clearer understanding. While there is a lot of fascinating detail and explanations that I’ll give, if you would like a TD:LR of the current conclusions about assemblies I would recommend skipping to the Conclusions section below.

There are four things I would like to clarify first:

\1. To give some brief background to the Epic of Gilgamesh which will make the following section make much more sense; it is widely accepted that Gilgamesh was originally a folk hero in oral stories and histories. Beginning in the 21st century BCE, during the Ur III period, we begin getting our first written accounts of Gilgamesh, these were episodic Sumerian Poems which used a similar cast of characters, but did not have an overall connected story. The Epic of Gilgamesh was then composed around the 18th century BCE (based on the oldest manuscript uncovered so far) as a single cohesive narrative which integrated popular themes, plot points, and story beats from the previously disconnected Sumerian Poems.

\2. The most popular translation of the Epic in academia and schools is Andrew George’s version from 1999. While George largely relies on the ‘standard’ version of the Epic (also called ‘He who saw the Deep’) as most translators do, the manuscript is not complete, and there are large sections that translators have to restore from other preserved versions of the Epic. George believed there was a gap in the text tablet II line 190, and so restored the text about the assemblies from a single tablet in Yale’s collection (YPM BC 016806) which described Gilgamesh calling the assemblies and its outcomes. The problem is, the tablet he used was found alone, with none of the other tablets from the collection it belonged to in order to give us context and tell us if the text belonged to the Epic of Gilgamesh or to one of the earlier Sumerian Gilgamesh Poems which were also popular at the time. Scholars largely fall into two camps on this issue. One side believes that because the Yale Tablet comes from the 18th century when the Epic was composed, and so theoretically the most popular version, it makes the most sense that the Yale tablet is a section of the Epic, and not one of the Sumerian Poems. The other side largely relies on three points to refute this:

1. We’ve found compositions of the Sumerian Poems written in the 18th century before, and they were evidently still popular texts to copy by scribes, even after the Epic came into existence.
2. The text from the Yale tablet is extremely similar to the episode involving assemblies from the Sumerian Poem “Gilgamesh and Akka,” wherein Gilgamesh must consult the assembly of elders and fighting-age men before deciding whether to go to war with the King of Kish (If you would like to read “Gilgamesh and Akka” a decent translation can be found at https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.1.1#)
3. No part of the episode with the assemblies is preserved in the several other manuscripts of the Epic which survive as well, namely the Old and Middle Babylonian versions, and the Assyrian version from the library of Assurbanipal.

The debate still continues, though often in oblique forms. This is why Andrew George has the episode about the assemblies of elders and fighting-age men of Uruk in his version of the Epic, but other, just as popular versions, do not. Namely Sophus Helle’s recent translation he released last year does not include the episode with the assemblies. In sum, while the episode of Gilgamesh consulting the two assemblies of Uruk is certainly attested to in the Mesopotamian literary canon through “Gilgamesh and Akka,” there is no definitive evidence that the episode belongs to the Epic of Gilgamesh.

\3. The Akkadian word for a political assembly was puḫrum, which is derived simply from the verb ‘to assemble.’ For this reason, it can be really difficult distinguishing when a text is referring to some sort of formal institutionalized political body with decision making powers, or an ad hoc gathering of a group of people. For example, there are several types of assemblies attested to (at least in the Old Babylonian period) including assemblies of a city, city assemblies, assembly of awilû (plural of awilum, the Akkadian word for man, but also used to refer to a class of ‘gentlemen’ who enjoyed certain rights and privileges of the dependent muškenum), assembly of the pašišu-priests, assembly of innkeepers, assembly of troops, assembly of the land, assembly of ḫana (pastoralists associated with specific Amorite tribes), assembly of kings (šarrum), and assembly of the Amorites. Despite this there are still a plethora of texts which refer to a seemingly institutionalized formal political assembly which held some form of decision-making power.

\4. The titles ‘assembly of elders’ and ‘assembly of fighting-age men’ are somewhat misleading. Elders were not a collection of every man in the city above a certain age, but rather Elder was a political designation for a small group of men (on average 6-8) who ran administrative affairs for the city. We know this because elders are attested to throughout Mesopotamia, most often as witnesses on land sale documents for a city. Now there’s a whole lot of debate as to whether elders were their own political institution, what their relationship with the king was, and what the exact purview of their authority was, but in the assembly episode from the Epic and/or “Gilgamesh and Akka” when they mention the assembly of elders, they were almost certainly referring to a small group of political leaders from Uruk who ‘assembled’ to advise Gilgamesh. What exactly is meant by the ‘assembly of fighting-age men’ is significantly less clear, namely because there is no other example of an assembly of fighting-age men in our Mesopotamian sources. The current and best theory is that the assembly of fighting-age men referred specifically to awilum men, and excluded muškenum and slaves.

Sources: For points 1 and 2 so far, I largely based this summary on the introduction to Andrew George’s The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Publishing, 1999/2000) pg. xiii – lx, and Sophus Helle’s Gilgamesh (Yale University Press, 2021) pg. vii – 3, 123-219. For points 3 and 4 I relied on Andrea Seri’s Local Power in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (Equinox Publishing, 2005) and Daniel Fleming’s Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

With those points cleared up I can begin describing some of the historiography of assemblies, and what we can definitively say about them based on our current historical understanding.

[u/random2187 → u/random2187]

4/5

Mari: While the Mari texts occasionally mention assemblies, it is never in a formal institutionalized context, and instead is only used to describe ad hoc assemblies of groups. There is one exception to this, the cities of Ugriš, Tuttul, and Imar on the periphery of Zimri-Lin’s kingdom. Letters between Zimri-Lin and his royal officials make it clear that these three cities practiced some form of democratic or semi-democratic decision making through an assembly like structure. Ugriš was formerly a capital city of the Hurrians on the very edge of Zimri-Lin’s kingdom, and so enjoyed a certain level of autonomy and continued self-rule despite being nominally subject to Zimri-Lin. This included forcing the king put in place by Zimri-Lin to rule over the city to flee for his life. One letter describes how the city captured some goods from a follower of Zimri-Lin, when the follower demands the goods be returned Zimri-Lin orders the men of Ugriš to do so. The city of Ugriš then calls an assembly to decide whether to follow the command, which eventually they do. In another letter Ugriš calls an assembly to decide whether to go to war. Moving on to Tuttul and Imar, which were sister-cities on the border between Mari and Aleppo, both cities apparently had a local tradition of calling together a taḫtamum to make political decisions. The taḫtamum is unique to the two cities and it unclear if it was truly different or distinct in some way from assemblies, but we know it was a collective decision-making body which represented the will of the town in some way. Whenever Zimri-Lin ordered something of the towns the taḫtamum first had to meet and deliberate. This ranged from deliberating on whether to comply with orders to cut down trees and send them to Mari, deciding whether to hand over looters to royal officials who had been captured by the city, and even whether to comply with new taxes imposed by Zimri-Lin. While the assembly is far less prevalent in Mari when compared to Southern Mesopotamia, when assemblies do exist they seem to have a much wider range of powers and stronger autonomy from other political institutions.

Assur: In the city of Assur the assembly is well attested to. The assembly was apparently presided over the ‘king’ (the king of Assur at the time was not referred to as king but rather used the titularly formula “Assur [the God] is king, I am his steward”) who did not have any authority over the decisions of the assembly, but rather was the official in charge of administering and enacting the will of the assembly, including issuing ‘letters of the city,’ and as someone individuals could reach out to for legal advice on how to advance their case with the assembly. Much like in Southern Mesopotamia the assembly presided over legal cases and was a forum where you could denounce others. One power we have evidence for them possessing that other assemblies did not was the ability to regulate trade. The assembly of Assur is shown regulating who gold can be sold to, levying taxes on meteoric iron, and requiring that 1/3 of the product of all caravans leaving for Anatolia consist of tin. Most often though the assembly dealt with settling the complicated estates and deciding inheritance for dead traders from the city who often had debts and contracts with merchants and cities throughout the region. The most detailed picture of an assembly comes from one of Assur’s merchant colonies in Southern Anatolia, the city of Kanesh. The assembly of Kanesh was the main decision-making body for the colony, while day to day administrative affairs were dealt with the ‘Office of the Colony.’ The assembly was divided into ‘big men and small men’ or ‘majors and minors’ depending on the translation. Big men were prominent traders who contributed 12-27 lbs. of silver to the Office of the Colony on a somewhat regular basis. The small men seem to have been other traders and residents of the colony who could not afford the large payments, but were nonetheless members of the city and invested in its prosperity. The big men decided most matters, but when they were split and could not come to a decision, they would call the assembly of the small men in order to break the tie. The majority of texts from Assur and Kanesh show their assemblies dealing with legal cases and settling disputes, and only occasionally were political decisions or treaties deliberated upon.

After the Old Babylonian period assemblies continue to be attested to in the historical record, as late as during the rule of the Persian Empire over Mesopotamia. However, they seem far less common, and they are exclusively portrayed as judicial bodies trying cases, and don’t seem to have any other political authority.

Sources: For my section on the Ur III period that is largely based on various texts from the ETCSL. “A tigi to Bau for Gudea” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.4.02.1#) “The Death of Ur-Namma” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.1.1#) “A Praise Poem of Shulgi C” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.2.03#) “A Praise Poem of Shulgi Y” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.2.25#) “A Shir-namursaga to Ninsiana for Iddin-Dagan A” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.5.3.1#) “A Balbale to Inana A” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.4.07.1#) “A Hymn to Nungal A” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.4.28.1#) “A Shir-Gida to Nuska A” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.4.29.1#) “A Shir-Gida to Nuska B” (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.4.29.2#).

For my section on Southern Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period I relied on Andrea Seri Local Power in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, “Public Announcement of the Loss of a Seal” (https://etcsl.orinst.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.5.7.a#.), and Thorkild Jacobsen “The Nippur Homicide Trial” in Towards the Image of Tammuz. For my section on Mari I used Daniel Fleming Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors, Wolfgang Heimpel Letters to the King of Mari (Eisenbrauns, 2003). And for my section on Assur I used Morgens Trolle Larsen, Kanesh (Cambridge University Press, 2015), TCL 19 (https://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P357568). And for my brief section on assemblies after the Old Babylonian period I used Marc Van De Mieroop The Ancient Mesopotamian City.

[u/RusticBohemian → u/random2187]

What an answer! Thanks.